Affirm Press is delighted to join forces with the Western Sydney literacy movement Sweatshop to establish a mentorship which will enable two Western Sydney writers from culturally diverse backgrounds to develop their debut novels.

Greg French is best known as a master fly fisher, and he shares many of his wondrous fishing stories in his book Water Colour. But what many readers may not realise is that he has plenty of encounters with creatures much furrier, and bigger, than fish: bears. He shares here some incredible stories and photos from over the years.

We recently celebrated the launch of John Tesarsch’s brilliant third novel, Dinner with the Dissidents, where Lee Kofman shared some of her insights into this literary thriller, set in the tumultuous times of 1970s Moscow.

In the spirit of the ‘Literary Tattoos’ session at Melbourne Writers Festival, where festival-goers can get inked with a book-related design, the Affirm Press team reveals what our own literary tattoos would be.

It was an intense and inspiring week. My first meeting with the editors became a three-hour discussion of my manuscript. I’d been working alone for years on my story; to talk about it with editors who had read my work deeply was my idea of heaven.

I have wanted to make a book about colour for young children for some time. As well as helping them make sense of the world, it’s a child’s first experience of the aesthetic, of art really, and of a visual, sensory, and emotional response.

Fiction classes helped me breathe life into the characters in my story without divulging too much of them personally. It also taught me how to set a scene using all my senses, even when it hurt emotionally to revisit certain memories or moments in my life.

I read Melbourne author Christian White’s DECAY THEORY in a day, a night and a morning. I was absolutely enthralled; my family didn’t get a look-in. Christian writes with a kind of magic, and I was under his spell from the very first page.

It sounds ridiculous, but I didn’t realise until pretty late in life that books were made by people or that you could work as part of that world. But one of my earliest memories is reading The Pokey Little Puppy on my mum’s lap, squished into her brown 70s rocking chair, which we used to do a lot.

The plan was always to become an editor with a trade publisher (if you check my Grade 12 notebook it has ‘Book editor’ listed as #1 dream job, followed, for reasons I can no longer explain, by ‘Town Planner’).

What a year 2016 has been! And yet I’ve learned so little. Perhaps the lessons of the recent past will reveal themselves when I’m not panicking about the hundred things undone, the Christmas shopping unshopped, and the promised blog piece for Grace heretofore unwritten. It’s been a bumper year for Affirm Press and we’ve continued the huge expansion of recent years. Blahdy blah. But like every other publisher, we’re weighing up the what ifs – what if we’d recognised what the least successful ten books would be, and focused all our energy on the top ten instead? Why does it [...]

On 7 January I will face my fear of water and swim the world's largest open water event: the Lorne Pier to Pub. I agreed to take on the challenge nearly 12 months ago as a way of raising funds for domestic violence.

Letter to My Teenage Self is the passion project of teenager Grace Halphen who, after having a tough time transitioning between schools, set out to create a book that would help other teenagers feel reassured and less isolated when they went through tough times. The book features letters from 55 prominent Australians offering the advice they wish they’d heard when they were growing up.

Greg French believes that fly fishers have discovered how to develop physical and spiritual connections with nature that are completely sustainable. ‘Trout are found in some of the most wild, romantic and scenically diverse habitats on Earth, and fly fishers the world over share a unique camaraderie, something universally profound and sincere.

I first pitched the idea having seen an article about Dock Street Brewery’s ‘Ain’t Nothing to Funk With’ – a golden saison barrel-aged with the music of Wu Tang Clan. Being a beer and a hip-hop lover I had to investigate, and I realised there are heaps of weird and wacky beers out there but no books dedicated to them. So the idea was born, and Martin and Keiran were foolish cool enough to give me a go at it!

Sometimes it's actually liberating to know that you aren't the best. It might help us concentrate on achieving things that we are more capable of. I'm not saying people should give up, however sometimes I think some people just shouldn't begin in the first place.

We’ve all heard the safety warning on planes before takeoff to always apply your own oxygen mask before attending to your loved ones - the idea being that without your own air, you can’t help anyone else. Well, it’s the same for parenting.

Affirm Press is pleased to announce that we have acquired the rights to publish Paula Keogh’s memoir The Green Bell. In October 2015 Paula received manuscript development from our editors, Ruby Ashby-Orr and Kate Goldsworthy, as part of the Affirm Press Mentorship Award at Varuna House.

Nearly three years ago, we restructured and committed ourselves wholeheartedly to publishing and we’ve been expanding ever since. We’re officially the fastest growing publisher in Australia, but we pride ourselves more on being the most positive publisher in Australia (through a combination of dynamism, idealism and, frankly, naivety).

‘I used to wake in the morning and put my pants on one leg at a time with hope and belief. Now I lay around pantless with belief only in home deliveries and twist top bottles. Damn you Leunig. My hope has drained away.’ – Tim Rogers (You Am I)